[REQUEST] : Open water swim app

Brian, I think you are getting confused, or at the very least you are confusing me. Nobody is suggesting that the vivoactive has the open water swimming feature/data filtering. IANFAGAN discovered that when using the built-in walk activity profile, he was able to record reasonably accurate GPS data while swimming. This session was recorded on a vivoactive using the built-in walk activity profile. Notice that the GPS path is nice and smooth?

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/758627728

Contrast that with this session which was recorded using my Activity Recorder app with the activity type set to Swimming / Open Water Swim. Notice that the GPS path is super erratic?

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/760304293

I haven't asked IANFAGAN to try to swim with my Activity Recorder app in with the activity type set to Walking / Unspecified, but I'm guessing that the GPS data would be nice and smooth. If this is the case, I'd really expect that whatever is being done to the GPS data in a walk session be applied to the GPS data when in a swim session (when I say session, I'm referring to the object returned from a call to the ConnectIQ ActivityRecorder.createSession() method).

...IANFAGAN discovered that when using the built-in walk activity profile, he was able to record reasonably accurate GPS data while swimming...
...whatever is being done to the GPS data in a walk session...

There should not be anything done to the GPS data in a walk session. It should look terrible (like the second recording) if you attempt to record swimming with it.

GPS track recording from our devices should only look smoothed out during an open water swim if they are recorded with the open water swim mode. This feature does not have any auto-detection that could be triggered in other modes.

...with the activity type set to Walking / Unspecified, but I'm guessing that the GPS data would be nice and smooth.

The GPS data should not be smoothed if you do this. I suspect it will not be if you try it, and if it is, it is a device bug.

There should not be anything done to the GPS data in a walk session. It should look terrible (like the second recording) if you attempt to record swimming with it.

Fortunately for vivoactive users, this is not the case. The data looks exactly as a user would want it to be.

The GPS data should not be smoothed if you do this. I suspect it will not be if you try it, and if it is, it is a device bug.

So if I test it and I see smoothed data (exactly what the users want for a swimming activity), it would be considered a bug in the walk activity app and it would be fixed/removed? Of course the option that I'd like to see would be to figure out what about walk mode is allowing it to work for swimming, and applying that to a swim activity type.

I'm not sure it is a bug for the walk mode data to be filtered to as it is. I do think it would be a valuable enhancement if whatever filtering is being applied to recording a walk activity now was applied when recording in swim a swim activity.

Personally, I think there should be no more filtering on "walking" than there is on "running" And in neither case is my body covered with water! :)

Maybe a suggestion to the CIQ folks would be a way to specify "filtering" when recording an activity? But then there is dealing with a filter not being available on all devices....

I confirmed with the device team that there is no GPS filtering applied to the walking mode. The track recorded by IANFAGAN is almost certainly a fluke caused by the device failing to reacquire GPS when his arm was above water for a majority of the activity.

I also confirmed that the open water swim feature found in the FR920XT and Fenix 3 is not available on the VivoActive. If we create an API that can select this recording mode, the VivoActive will not be able to enable it.

I believe the idea behind this app shouldn't be relying in the open water swim mode that obviously is not available in the Vivoactive (and probably Garmin won't ever expose), but playing with the GPS signal strenght (if that is exposed in the API), and then do an algorithm that smoothes the GPS drops.

I also confirmed that the open water swim feature found in the FR920XT and Fenix 3 is not available on the VivoActive. If we create an API that can select this recording mode, the VivoActive will not be able to enable it.

Is that a technical limitation or a commercial one ?

Anyways, if it is a limitation, unless they are also blocking the GPS signal strength / drops in the API, an open water swim algorithm should be possible to implement or am I missing something ?

Thanks!